Financial education is no longer a fringe concern in the UAE. Schools, universities, employers and financial institutions all recognise that young people need stronger financial foundations. Programmes have expanded, budgets have grown and the conversation has matured. Yet outcomes remain uneven.
Many young adults still enter the workforce unsure of how to manage credit, vulnerable to lifestyle inflation and hesitant when faced with long-term financial decisions. Engagement with financial education is often high but its lasting effect is harder to detect. This suggests not a lack of effort but a structural issue in how financial capability is being built and measured.
Fragmentation hides what matters
Most financial education initiatives today operate independently. A school programme here. A university workshop there. A bank-led campaign at a moment of transition. Each may be well-intentioned, even well-designed, but together they form a patchwork rather than a system.
What many share is how success is measured. Completion rates, attendance figures and satisfaction surveys suggest progress, but reveal little about whether behaviour has changed or decision-making has improved.
A learner can complete a course and still freeze when faced with their first credit decision. They can leave a session feeling confident, yet revert to old habits weeks later. Without visibility into how understanding translates into action, the effect is largely assumed.
Financial decisions shaped by identity
Money decisions are rarely made in calm, instructional settings. They are made under pressure, emotion, social comparison and time constraints. In those moments, people rely less on what they were taught and more on how they see themselves in relation to money.
This is where financial identity matters. Financial identity is the internal narrative that shapes whether someone approaches money with confidence or avoidance, intention or impulse. It forms early, absorbs messages from family and culture, and continues to guide behaviour long after formal learning ends.
In the UAE, this has particular relevance. Young people often gain financial access early, operate in a highly visible consumption environment, and grow up in households where money is present but rarely discussed openly. The transition from dependence to responsibility can be swift, with little room for trial and error.
In such conditions, knowledge alone offers limited protection. What determines outcomes is how young people see themselves when they are required to decide without guidance.
Capability reveals itself over time
Financial capability does not announce itself at the end of a lesson. It emerges through behaviour. It shows up when someone pauses before a purchase, recognises a spending trigger, or explains a financial decision clearly to another person.
These moments rarely appear in traditional reports. Yet they are the clearest indicators of whether financial education has translated into real-world capability.
When identity shifts – from avoidance to engagement, from impulse to intention – behaviour follows. When it does not, information alone rarely fills the gap.
What national financial capability engine does
This is where the case for a national financial capability engine becomes clear.
By this, we mean a system that can be deployed at scale without relying on specialist delivery, produces consistent behavioural outcomes across cohorts, and reports defensible impact over time – allowing institutions to measure real change, not just reach.
Most financial education today depends heavily on who delivers it. Outcomes vary by facilitator, school or setting. Measurement becomes inconsistent. Scale often comes at the cost of reliability. A capability engine is designed to remove that dependency.
It embeds learning into real-life financial decisions rather than isolated instruction, and standardises how judgment and applied understanding are developed. Whether deployed in a school, workplace, or national programme, outcomes remain comparable.
Crucially, it produces data that institutions can stand behind. Instead of reporting participation alone, it captures behavioural signals: how decision-making evolves, where confidence is matched by competence and where financial capability is strengthening or stalling.
For schools, this means understanding whether learning translates into judgment. For employers, it means supporting financial well-being with evidence. For banks and policymakers, it means identifying risk patterns early, before they become entrenched problems.
In this sense, a national financial capability engine functions less like a programme and more like infrastructure – connecting existing efforts and raising the standard for impact.
Financial capability is not a soft outcome. It influences workforce readiness, resilience, productivity and long-term economic stability. A generation that sees itself as financially capable is better equipped to navigate employment volatility, entrepreneurship and life transitions with confidence.
The next phase of financial education in the UAE will depend less on expanding content and more on improving visibility. When institutions can clearly see whether financial capability is actually being built, the conversation shifts from activity to impact.
A national financial capability engine offers that clarity – shaping not just what young people know about money but who they become in relation to it.
Marilyn Pinto is founder of KFI Global
